John Boyega to Star in Pacific Rim 2

We’ve known for some time that Pacific Rim 2 is a thing, after the massive success of the original film.

Now John Boyega, best known for his turn as Finn in Star Wars The Force Awakens, has been chosen by producer Guillermo del Toro to play the son of Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost.

We don’t know anything about the role other than that, but we of course know that John will be under the care of director Steven S. DeKnight.

del Toro had this to say: “I am very proud and happy to welcome John into a fantastic sandbox. The Pacific Rim universe will be reinforced with him as a leading man as it continues to be a multicultural, multi-layered world. ‘The World saving the world’ was our goal and I couldn’t think of a better man for the job.”

We also know basically nothing about the Pacific Rim sequel, other than it’s potentially working title Pacific Rim: Maelstrom. Hopefully, we see more of an exploration of the world of the kaiju. An exploration of this could help the film from being a retread of the original, but sadly we will have to wait and see.

I have no doubt that John will do well in his role as Stacker’s son, given his turn as Finn in Episode 7. He seems well suited to the type of character this could be, although they might surprise us and make Stacker’s son very different from his father.